The Forum Arthur Davison Ficke
LOST TREASURE
You know deep in your heart, it could not last—
And, when a wind, newborn on some hillside—
(Some fair tall hill the other side of Crete)
Came laden with the dear and odorous past—
(Laden with scents of gardens that have died,
Buried in dust, not any longer sweet.)
Then, realized, all the unlovely years
Lay on your heart, like those old gardens’ dust;
You had forgotten how your life was fair,
For all the memories were dulled with tears
Since shed, and unsuspected moth and rust
Ate deep, and naught remembered was but care.
So is your treasure lost, vanished away—
Nothing but wind and half-shut eyes and grass—
Nothing of now but strivings after then.
And naught heard in the clear air of to-day
But dusty wings that crumble as they pass—
You have not strength to make them live again.
The Masses Lydia Gibson
OLD FAIRINGDOWN
Soft as a treader on mosses
I go through the village that sleeps;
The village too early abed,
For the night still shuffles, a gypsy,
In the woods of the east,
And the west remembers the sun.
Not all are asleep; there are faces
That lean from the walls of the gardens.
Look sharply, or you will not see them,
Or think them another stone in the wall.
I spoke to a stone, and it answered
Like an agèd rock that crumbles;
Each falling piece was a word.
“Five have I buried,” it said,
“And seven are over the sea.”
Here is a hut that I pass,
So lowly it has no brow,
And dwarfs sit within at a table.
A boy waits apart by the hearth;
On his face is the patience of firelight,
But his eyes seek the door and a far-world
It is not the call to the table he waits,
But the call of the sea-rimmed forests,
And cities that stir in a dream.
I haste by the low-browed door,
Lest my arms go in and betray me,
A mother jealously passing.
He will go, the pale dwarf, and walk tall among giants;
The child with his eyes on the far land,
And fame like a young curled leaf in his heart.